MOVIE REVIEW: 'Mudbound' is magnificent

Friday

Nov 17, 2017 at 7:00 AM

Dee Rees' magnificent “Mudbound” is a little film that reads like a novel with its richness of characters, its palpable sense of place and its lacerating commentary on a nation where equality exists only on a dusty old document called the Declaration of Independence.

By Al Alexander/For The Patriot Ledger

Imagine an epic movie like “Giant” or, better yet, “Gone with the Wind,” made on a miniscule budget, but without sacrificing any of the subtext dealing with class, race and the common denominator of war. That, in a shell, is Dee Rees’ magnificent “Mudbound,” a little film that reads like a novel with its richness of characters, its palpable sense of place and its lacerating commentary on a nation where equality exists only on a dusty old document called the Declaration of Independence.

It’s not a movie to see, but experience, as it vividly exposes the senselessness of bigotry and hatred through, of all things, friendship. And it will devastate you. Nor will you soon shake its lingering impact, especially at a time when a sitting American president struggles to find the words to denounce white supremacy. That fact alone enhances the immediacy of what is sadly a timeless story that – although set in the 1940s – resonates louder than ever today.

It’s a point made subtly and powerfully by Rees, who makes a quantum leap from her first film, “Pariah,” an intimate, personal story about a Brooklyn teenager’s struggle to break out of the closet. Like that acclaimed indie, Rees again builds “Mudbound” around family – two of them, one white, one black, both dirt-poor. They are victims of a recovery from the Great Depression that hasn’t yet reached the muddy cotton fields of Mississippi. And it’s about to get worse when Roosevelt broadcasts his “day of infamy” speech.

A member of each family jumps at the chance to sign up to defend Old Glory. For the white, cultured McAllan clan, it’s youngest son, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund in a career-making turn), a suave playboy who never met a woman he couldn’t seduce, including the wife (Carey Mulligan) of his sod-busting brother, Henry (Jason Clarke). For the black Jackson tribe, it’s Ronsel (“Straight Outta Compton’s” superb Jason Mitchell), the eldest son of Hap (Rob Morgan) and Florence (Mary J. Blige, outstanding) who sees the war as both a chance to serve his country and earn a free ticket out of the repressive Jim Crow South.

While Jamie and Ronsel are off squashing Hitler, tensions brew between the McAllans and their sharecropping tenants, the Jacksons, who Henry cluelessly treats more like servants than renters. And you can see where he gets it from in his cranky, racist father, Pappy (“Breaking Bad’s” Jonathan Banks), a surly chap who never wastes an opportunity to express his distaste for “coloreds.” Rees, in adapting Hillary Jordan’s novel with co-writer Virgil Williams, deftly uses this simmering feud to reveal not just how different these two families are, but how they are so much alike in their chase of an American dream that will one day enable them to own land to live on and profit from. But God, who Hap sermonizes every Sunday in his half-built church, has other ideas, deluging his and Henry’s precious few acres with seemingly endless sheets of crop-killing rain.

Abetted by ever-shifting perspectives and narrators (usually a no-no in film), Rees slickly weaves the various personal and familial story strands, including – most intriguingly – the growing resentment of Mulligan’s Laura toward Henry. The self-proclaimed spinster (Mulligan? Really?) blames her hubby for not consulting her before selling the family’s comfy Memphis home and loading up the truck and dragging the family down to Mississippi to foolishly chase a “Green Acres”-type dream. Rees even finds time to check in on the exploits of Jamie, a bomber pilot, and Ronsel, a tank commander, as they experience the thrill of victory and the agony of losing close friends to German bombs and bullets. And that’s just the first hour.

It’s then that the real story, an unlikely (and potentially lethal) post-war friendship Jamie strikes up with Ronsel, kicks in – and it’s riveting, not to mention deeply moving. The basis for this bromance? The shared experience of war. Both return home with varying levels of PTSD. Jamie drowns his nightmares in alcohol; while Ronsel lets his silently stew like a steeping teapot. And neither is any too happy over how the white townsfolk maliciously treat a war hero like Ronsel, who can only hang with Jamie in secluded locations out of sight of the KKK. The irony of going from liberating a continent to returning to the chains of America’s ugly past isn’t lost on either vet.

It’s unnerving stuff that Rees presents poignantly with shades of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” And although it’s not her intent, it angers you something mighty, as you fill with shame over how skin color can make men behave so deplorably. There’s also no escaping the film’s growing sense of doom. But nothing prepares you for a shocking third act so intense audiences members have allegedly left the theater due to its graphic nature.

The fact that it hits you hard is testament to Rees ability to lure us so completely into the lives of people letting prejudice get the best of them, often unknowingly. And that’s the saddest part of “Mudbound” and its indictment of folks who focus on the differences instead of the similarities that – like with Jamie and Ronsel – carry the potential to bind us. That day of oneness may never come, but “Mudbound” sure makes it seem possible. MUDBOUND (R for some disturbing violence, brief language and nudity.) Cast: Garrett Hedlund, Jason Mitchell, Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan and Jonathan Co-written and directed by Dee Rees. Grade: A